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Remember 1989? The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of democracy and democratic institutions in the old Communist bloc, including Mother Russia, inspired a new generation of journalists in places where a free press had been a state crime. Other journalists in other places, such as Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and China, were showing a new boldness and courage that gave rise to the hope that we were entering a golden age of press freedom.

Authoriatarian rulers strengthened their hold on power in many former Soviet republics in 2004. Their secretive, centralized governments aggressively suppressed all forms of independent activity, from journalism and human rights monitoring to religious activism and political opposition.

The Toll: 1995-2004

Each year in January, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) publishes a list of journalists killed in the line of duty around the world. This list has become the most widely cited press freedom statistic and is often seen as a barometer of the state of global press freedom.

While the correlation between the number of journalists killed and the state of press freedom in a particular country is far from exact--no journalists have been killed in Cuba, for example, and only one has been killed in China during the last decade--the annual list does give some sense of the range of risks that journalists face in reporting the news. To provide a more complete statistical picture, CPJ releases a list of journalists killed during the last decade. The list has been broken down by year, country, and a variety of other categories.

The U.N. International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in
The Hague (ICTY) ruled to limit compelled testimony from war
correspondents. The decision, announced at the tribunal's Appeals
Chamber, came in response to the appeal by former Washington Post
reporter Jonathan C. Randal, who had been subpoenaed to testify in the
case of former Bosnian-Serb housing minister Radoslav Brdjanin, who is
facing charges of genocide because of his alleged role in the
persecution and expulsion of more than 100,000 non-Serbs during the
Bosnian war. The subpoena against Randal was set aside, and he is no
longer required to testify.

Emboldened by the growing number of U.S. troops in
the country, President Askar Akayev has used the threat of
international terrorism as an excuse to curb political dissent and
suppress the independent and opposition media in Kyrgyzstan. Compliant
courts often issue exorbitant damage awards in politically motivated
libel suits, driving even the country's most prominent newspapers to
the brink of bankruptcy.